Fines Take Fun Out Of Cruising Many Teens Avoid International Drive

After handing out more than 150 traffic tickets on International Drive last weekend, police along the tourist strip are hoping Central Florida's teen-agers get the message:

If you go cruising, your wallet will take a bruising.

Initial traffic estimates show the message was received.

''On Friday traffic flowed four or five times better than ever before,'' said Garritt Toohey, spokesman for International Drive merchants who are paying for a monthlong traffic crackdown. ''Everybody was very impressed.''

Everyone, that is, except some teens and their parents. They say the operation - in which merchants hired off-duty Orange County deputy sheriffs and Orlando police to write tickets for everything from illegal U-turns to driving in the passing lane - is nothing but harassment.

''They're using a cannon when they should be using a baseball bat,'' said Betty James of Orlando, whose 17-year-old son, Rob, sometimes cruises International Drive.

On weekends during the school year, and almost every night during the summer, teen-agers and young adults cruise the road and hang out at several fast-food restaurants. They eye members of the opposite sex while driving slowly from one end of the drive to the other.

Merchants will spend $9,000 to $10,000 this month to hire eight deputies and five police officers to assist the 10 officers who already work on International Drive.

Deputies, who wrote about 100 tickets during the weekend, were much more aggressive than Orlando police, who issued citations for 53 moving and non-moving violations. Fines for moving violations start at $52. Fines for non-moving violations, such as parking tickets, start at $16.

Orlando police spokeswoman Joni Gauntlett said officers issued more verbal warnings - 43 - than tickets. OPD Sgt. Victor Uvalle last week said his officers would not be ''nitpicking'' but would ticket more severe moving violations and issue warnings for the rest.

''It's nothing different here than anywhere else,'' Uvalle said during the crackdown. ''It's just we have more people doing it.''

Sheriff's Sgt. Jim Hollomon took a different approach. He said deputies under his command would be writing tickets for every offense they saw.

On a usual weekend night, deputies and officers combined may write 15 to 20 tickets from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., the hours teen-agers cruise.

Toohey said it's all for the better if deputies are sticking to the letter of the law.

''If they are using laws that are not generally enforced elsewhere, that's their prerogative,'' Toohey said. ''If it helps the traffic out there, I'm all for it.''

At the end of April, the merchants will look at the results of the crackdown and decide if they want to continue it permanently.